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Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Chris Hedges: Saudi Wahhabism a Tool of U.S. Foreign Policy

Chris Hedges describes how Wahhabism was first encouraged by the British to break up Islamic countries so they could divide and rule, then the US took over that role. The US told Islamic extremists that communism, socialism, and secularism was anti religion and so need to be stamped out.

The US has toppled many Middle Eastern democracies forcing them back to the stone ages. And these countries weren't allowed to develop their own industries which could compete with the West.

During the 1960's many Muslim countries were becoming liberal democracies giving women equal rights. Today the Middle East could have been modern democracies where extremism doesn't exist and wearing the Burka would be as rare as Christian nuns all covered up in the West.

11 comments:

Matt, you can start with Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. The counter revolution in Egypt recently was strongly backed by Washington. Indonesia if you want to go a little further east. Lebanon's democracy has always been at the whim of Israel, and Israel never does a thing without the green light from Washington. The Baathists in Iraq came to power in what the CIA called their "favourite coup". There was also a Washington-backed coup in Syria. Coups like these put representative democracy back decades.

Anyway, it's not US. It's Washington. A very crucial difference.

William Blum's books are good background. Even conservative cold warriors like Chalmers Johnson have written very well about Washington policy.

Yeah, it's not easy to remove dictators backed by foreign super-powers, specially when they brutally murder any opposition. So in some cases you need to go back to the 50's-60's (40's, they were mostly colonies still).

Now they get to enjoy the theocracies that were thoughtfully created by western back up and meddling. What's next, blaming American aborigines that they were massacred by foreign European invaders?

Trump is running on a platform of coop with Russia,... What if he wins and then does that are you guys going to just ignore that? Pretend it isn't happening? Come up with some convoluted conspiracy theory to explain it?

Cmon this isn't that hard just listen to what people say and then evaluate their results they get...

Matt, I'm not conflating anything with anything. Democracies were overthrown, not theocracies, not dictatorships. Washington likes theocracies, although on the whole it'd prefer secular dictatorships, it'll ally itself with whatever will crush democratic tendencies. Nobody can even be bothered these days to deny that Washington was behind the overthrow of Iran's parliamentary democracy in 1953. Or in Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. The excuse back then was that it was anti-communism. This of course never made any sense except to the wilfully stupid and naive: overthrowing anti-communist democrats in order to fight communism is a strange way of going about things. The obvious answer was that it had nothing to do with communism.

As much as I respect a good deal of what you say, the only conflation here is yours: you conflate Washington with America, and they're not the same thing. You understand that well enough on the domestic stage, but - and I'm sure you'll mind me saying, so my apologies in advance - you get unduly nationalistic when confronted with the demented shit Washington does internationally. It's not as if Congress and the White House can be demonic at home but angelic abroad!

Matt, Trump may wish to patch things up with Russia. When Obama said the same, he was denounced as a black Muslim socialist who isn't even American. Obama was all PR of course. He understood full well that Russia and the US have conflicting aims. Trump will understand that within about a week of entering the White House. If he doesn't, there are hundreds of foreign policy and military strategists who will happily will kick this stuff into his head. The US has "interests", and Trump will have to get on board very quickly with those "interests" or he'll find an empty cabinet, rebellious Congress and mutinous Joint Chiefs.

Tom, all very good points on Carter. He had choices and he made some very bad ones - the neoliberalism, Volcker, Iran, Afghanistan. He probably does look back and feel some remorse and may have done things differently. You get a sense of that when he's interviewed. JFK was a different beast entirely. He had no regrets, other than that he wasn't more hawkish from the off. He's easily the worst president the US has ever had, and to my mind the fact that he took over from a relatively competent and sane Eisenhower leaves an even worse taste in the mouth. But as I always say, Republicans/conservatives are wimps when compared to the real imperialists known as "liberals".